Flashback Friday: Wooden Marble Machines

It’s been a few months since I’ve done a Flashback Friday, so I decided it was time. I found this from a couple of years ago and thought there might be some current readers that haven’t been exposed to the magic of Wooden Marble Machines.

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A former co-worker sent me a link to a youtube video of binary adding machine made of wood and using marbles. I thought this was pretty cool. Then I went to the website referenced at the end of the video and found the very cool Marble Machine 2, including this video:

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Flashback Friday: Action, No Action

Because I’m having trouble coming up with a topic, and in honor of the fact that we’re doing the Wurst Ride again tomorrow (third year in a row!), here’s my post from after the ride last year. Again this year we’ve been pretty bad about training for it, though at least we managed a ride last weekend. Marci in particular hasn’t been riding much, so she’s going to do the 42K route again this year, though she’s not accompanying anyone and so is likely going to wait for us to get to her starting point.

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As I mentioned previously, this weekend I participated in the Wurst Ride, a 100 kilometer bike ride from Austin to Wurst Fest in New Braunfels. I did this ride last year as well, and I must say that it was more difficult this year. I attribute this primarily to the fact that I hadn’t ridden at all since the Outlaw Trail three weeks prior, though I think the wind may have been less favorable this year as well.

Marci was originally going to do the full 100K with us (as she did last year, which may be her longest ride), but a friend of ours decided to join us for her first bike ride so Marci did the 42K route with her instead. After the ride, my mother brought our kids down and we hung out at Wurst Fest for several hours, including spending some time with some friends that we hadn’t seen in quite some time. Lots of food, lots of people, lots of fun.

Not surprisingly, our Sunday was spent sleeping and veg’ing in front of the TV. I really need to make a better effort of at least kicking my kids outside for a while even if I’m not joining them. The weather was so nice this weekend that I’m now feeling guilty that we didn’t take advantage of it better on Sunday.

Flashback Friday: Letter from McKenzie

I decided that it’s time for another Flashback Friday post, so I’ve chosen one of my favorites. This is from January, 2007, when McKenzie was about 7 1/2.

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I just opened this letter from McKenzie (from school):

Talk about heart-touching….

Flashback Friday: Weekend in Manhattan

In memory of 9-11 and in honor of my upcoming visit to NYC, and because today is a Friday, I’ve decided to do another Flashback Friday using this post from last December. By the way, our trip to Toronto was last weekend. I’ll get a post done about that eventually, but I still have lots of pictures to process and I’ve been pretty busy with other things this week.

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As I mentioned last week, we spent last weekend in New York City. We flew in Friday night and by the time our delayed flight landed we decided to head straight for the party. It was my first opportunity to put faces to the names of Marci’s co-workers. We had a good time.

After sleeping in Saturday morning, we headed downtown to see what discount Broadway tickets were available. Next, we made our way up to the South Street Seaport where they were having some sort of Santa convention or something. There were people walking all around the area wearing Santa suits. We spent some time looking for some gloves for me as I’d left mine in my lighter jacket at home. I ended up picking up a pair from a street vendor near the World Trade Center Site — just before my hands were about to fall off. 🙂

World Trade Center Site

We were too late for the guided walking tour of the World Trade Center Site, so we just walked around on our own. Surprisingly, one of the best views was from the second story of the Burger King on the corner (above). There were only a few other spots around the site from which you could see the construction. I suppose the weird vibe I had was to be expected, but looking at the plans for the memorial and new buildings I couldn’t help but feel that the vibe will be even stronger after construction is complete.

Rockefeller Center

Without realizing it, our choice for a show for the night ended up being right next to Rockefeller Center, as well as being very close to our hotel. This was particularly convenient since we had previously decided to go see the Christmas tree before the show. Continuing the trend through most of the day — except for the walk from the South Ferry to the South Street Seaport — the place was packed with people. I know it’s cliched, but even at 28°F the energy level in Manhattan is constantly as high as (or higher than) most other places during special events.

We didn’t stay long, just long enough to take a few pictures before queueing up for the Radio City Christmas Spectacular starring The Rockettes. I was a little concerned that they wouldn’t let me in with my camera (it doesn’t fit in my pocket), but my long coat concealed it so there wasn’t an issue. As it turns out, they only forbid flash photography, so it probably wouldn’t have been a problem anyway. The lack of coat checks does make me wonder what the point of bag checks was, though.

Rockettes Dolls

The show was festive and enjoyable and included a nice short rendition of The Nutcracker, which is about the only way I can take it anymore. I hadn’t originally planned on taking any pictures, but since I had my camera and they had only prohibited flashes, I went ahead and took a few — and I certainly wasn’t the only one. Still, I made an attempt to avoid being too annoying to those around me. I doubt I was successful, but at least I made the attempt.

Flashback Friday: Just a bit off the top

LeSombre recently asked a question on his blog that led to me deciding to repost this entry from March of 2008. (It also led to the creation of a new category for my blog: Flashback Friday.)

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Back around Christmas time I decided to skip my irregularly scheduled — but fairly frequent — hair cut and let my hair grow out for a while. It has been many years since my hair has been more than a couple of inches long. Very soon after that, I also decided that I would let it grow out until after our spring break ski trip, at which point I would shave my head.

Now, I usually get my hair cut fairly short (a “2” on the clippers) and I got it particularly short a summer or two ago (a “1”), but I’ve never “gone all the way” with the clippers and certainly never taken a razor to it — until now.

Below are some before and after pictures — there are more in the album. [Edit: No, there are now just those four.]